Drakengard = Fun

[Joe]

I picked this up today at Best Buy in a very impulsive 40 dollar purchase, Square fanboy that I am. I've been playing it nonstop for a couple of hours now, and the first thing I want to say is this game is a LOT of fun. It has some RPG elements; you level up, do sidequests, and save your progress, but basically it is an action game. On the ground, it's essentially a good old fashioned hack and slash brawler. The closest thing I can think of to it is the two LoTR movie games that have come out over the past couple of years. The gameplay isn't particularly deep, certainly not as deep as the gameplay found in Square's other action RPG, Vagrant Story, and the learning curve is only a couple of hours. You can swing your weapon, jump, roll horizontally, and use various magic spells. That's not to say it's just a button basher; if you don't fight with some degree of strategy and employ combination attacks, things will be difficult for you. The control is unfortunately imperfect; it is hard to turn around to face enemies that are coming your way at times. In a decision of astonishing stupidity, the developers chose not to include a compass in the screen, which can make it extremely difficult to find out which way you're going, especially given the rather large size of the levels; you have to check the map quite often. In the air, on a dragon, the gameplay is closest to Panzer Dragoon Orta with bits of Ace Combat thrown in, though, again, the gameplay doesn't really reach the level of depth found in Orta. The control, again, can be absolutely maddening at times. In many levels, you can also switch between ground combat and air combat, and roasting hundreds of armored soldiers with fiery breath is undeniably fun. There are literally hundreds of individual enemies on the field; in the first two levels alone, I killed over a thousand in each. This is also the most violent Square game in years; the blood sprays quite liberally both during the gameplay and during the top-notch FMV sequences, the latter in which Caim, the main character hacks through armored soldiers, Berserk-style.

I haven't played too much, so I can't really comment on the story. The background is interesting however, and the main character is a badass. Of course this is a Square game, and in the area of storytelling Square rarely fails to please, so I would give it the benefit of the doubt and expect the story to be serviceable at worst and excellent at best. The atmosphere of the game is dark and medieval, feeling closest in spirit to FF Tactics and Vagrant Story.

The graphics and sound are decent, but not magnificent. They get the job done. The design, however, is quite cool. This is Square's most western looking game in years, I have yet to find a single eastern element in it, as opposed to FFX where the whole look of the game was basically Okinawan. The design of many of the airborne enemies is especially clever and unique. The characters designs look closest to those of FF8, and some of the FMV sequences may actually have you thinking of Helm's Deep and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. The localization is good as can be expected; the dialogue suits the game very well and the voice acting is up to par with FFX.

You may or may not like it, but it is at least worth a rental. Do give it a shot, if you're a Square fan, or if you like this sort of thing at all. Personally, I'm having a great time with it.

[thecreech]

It's only worth a rental at best. It is short and everything about it is so so. Not very challenging. I liked the music though